


a mathematical concept that one day explains how love happens

by what_a_dork_fish



Series: The Birther series [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Angst, Other, emotionally stunted, goopy child is very unhappy for a very long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 14:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17061548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_a_dork_fish/pseuds/what_a_dork_fish
Summary: “You have no authority. You have no agency. You are property of the Commander.”(a rewrite of The One Renamed)





	1. Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fucking hot mess that started out way too similar to my other origin fic for comfort so hey let's just call it a rewrite and be done with it.
> 
> Also this one feels like it'll be more fun.
> 
> (also, realized I didn't actually have room for Mrs. Chen *bangs head on wall for five minutes straight* so I removed her tag I'm sorry to everyone who was expecting her)

“You have no agency.”

The robotic voice repeats this phrase in several different languages, to catch all the nuances of the finality of the statement. The child quivers in the center of the box, the edges of its mass undulating fearfully. It understands these languages—it has been learning them since birth—but the statement frightens it.

“You have no authority. You have no agency. You are property of the Commander.”

The child flattens itself and wonders wildly if there is any escape.

“You have no authority. You have no agency. You are property of the Commander.”

The child surges forward, and follows the seams of the box, searching, searching for a way out. It’s so scared it can’t think. But there is no escape. It begins to scream, trying to drown out the voice, but the voice is pitched to be heard no matter what.

“You have no authority. You have no agency. You are property of the Commander.”

~

It takes ten cycles to break the child. It is almost dead by that point; most children who fight don’t make it that long without starving or tearing themselves to pieces. This child—an adult, now, but still so far behind its peers in development—shivers in the Tube, as it is forcibly nourished. The Keepers, all in their myriad hosts, inject the child again and again, and mutter when they realize that, no matter how much they feed it, it remains small and nonresponsive. It barely seems to notice the needles.

“We have to move it along,” the head Keeper says finally. “The next child is ready.”

The other Keepers agree, and the child is removed from the Tube and shipped to the Trainers.

The Trainer with the unfortunate task of making the child into a proper soldier doesn’t know what to make of it. Threats don’t seem to make it through, and punishments only induce wordless screams, not obedience. Finally, as a last resort, the Trainer fetches a fresh-killed beast and tells the child, “Speak, and I will give you this food.”

“I have no authority, I have no agency, I am property of the Commander,” the child says immediately, startling the Trainer. It sidles forward, and the Trainer, confused, gives it the beast. The child devours it quickly.

They start slow. “Tell me the rules and I will feed you.” When the child has shown a thorough grasp of the rules, the Trainer gives it the normal puzzles, promising food if it wins, and is astonished when the child completes them all in record time. It seems to… enjoy the puzzles. Much like the Trainer enjoys ripping the intestines out of their meals. It barely touches the food the Trainer gives it, fiddling with the puzzles for three whole sections before they break. The child immediately starts crying, until the Trainer picks up the food and throws it at the child. The child stops crying and eats hastily.

But then it picks up the broken puzzles and holds them out to the Trainer and asks, “More?”

The Trainer hesitates. Soldiers don’t like puzzles. But sometimes the children who like puzzles are not soldiers. So the Trainer says, “Yes. I will bring you more puzzles. But you don’t get any more if you break them.”

“I will not break them.”

It is very odd. The child is so enthusiastic, conquering harder and harder puzzles, until it is mastering techniques that the Makers only manage after years of teaching. The other Trainers go through four or five soldiers before this Trainer is allowed to speak with the Commander’s Third. The Trainer brings the child, locked tight in a sensory box, happily playing with a brand new toy specially commissioned for it.

“Great One,” the Trainer begins, “I have a question regarding this… trainee.”

“What,” the Third says flatly.

“Well… it’s not fit to be a soldier.”

“So kill it.”

“But it might be useful. May I show you?”

The Third chitters in annoyance, but grudgingly replies, “Yes, fine, get it over with.”

The Trainer opens the box, and the child immediately rises, triumphantly cradling the puzzle. “I did it!” the child tells the Trainer excitedly. “I didn’t break it, either! Can I have—“ The child notices the Third, and sinks down into the box again.

“Show the Great One what you can do with that toy,” the Trainer commands.

The child rises again, just enough to be seen, and shows all the way to work its toy, which is a complex creation of metal and stone that only the brightest of the Makers could create and manipulate. The Third chitters again, this time intrigued.

“Tell me, Trainee, how did you do that?” the Third asks.

“I… I thought about it, Great One,” the child replies softly. “This piece can obviously only move in this specific direction, because of these three nodes, and when the piece is moved, the panel unfolds, which makes it possible to move these six nodes, but only two of them do anything, the others are useless. These chains and this rod must be braided in this very specific order to make the panel close again. It’s not hard, once you’ve looked at it long enough.”

The Third looks at the snarl of moving pieces and is speechless. They are considered the best thinker in the army, and this unnamed Trainee has solved a puzzle even they could not guess quickly. Rage fills them, and fear—this Trainee can easily usurp them, and that would be chaos.

The Third has only a few options.

  1. Kill it immediately. Easiest and fastest, but messy.
  2. Put it in the Making garrisons, and work it until it dies of exhaustion. A suitable punishment, but a waste, because…
  3. Breeding it, and possibly creating more Makers, will be very useful.



“Put it in the Breeding cages.”

The Trainer fidgets. “Great One, if I may make a suggestion—“

“No, you may not,” the Third snaps. “Put it in the Breeding cages. We need more like it.”

The child, sheltered and honed to only think of the things it was given, still feels a tremor of cold terror. It doesn’t know what the Breeding cages are, but it knows they are bad, just from the Third’s tone and from the psychic signatures the Trainer is giving off. It is just about to give voice to a question, when the box slams shut, and it feels the jolt of the box being moved.

The child remembers the rules. It has no authority. It has no agency. It is the property of the Commander. Numbness that the child has never truly forgotten spreads throughout it again, and it cradles the puzzle against its mass and stops thinking.

~

The Breeding cages are not terrible on the surface. Birthers are put in tubes and encouraged to divide. They are given the very best care, the very best food and whatever comforts they desire.

But they must birth. They must put out a child as often as possible. And no comfort in the world could replace the joy of a puzzle for the newest Birther.

Birthers have names. The child trembles as it is locked in its tube, and is shown a selection of words. None of them are in the Home language; the Home language is not for naming. They are all stolen from other languages, aliens that they have conquered or spied on. There is a very small section from a planet fairly close by, that the Commander has been eyeing for a while; and one name stands out to the child.

Venus. A name that feels soft and comforting. It points to that one and softly asks to be named Venus. The Keeper nods, and the plaque on the child’s tube is engraved with the name “Venus”.

The Keepers coach Venus through the first birth, telling it how to grow and separate new cells, until it can successfully create a child of its own. The Keepers tell Venus that all first children are stillborn—

But this one isn’t.

Venus touches the child, amazed at its tininess and soft sheen of it, the vibrant colors flickering across its surface. The Keepers are in a flurry, excitedly talking about how this has never happened before, how this is so strange and amazing, how the child should be taken for testing immediately. One Keeper grabs for the child, but it leaps away, into Venus’s mass, and Venus cradles it tightly, flowing away from the surprised Keeper. Venus doesn’t want to give it up. An animal instinct, an urge to protect this child from any and all who try to take it, is bubbling through Venus.

But there are many Keepers and only one of Venus. They tear the crying child from Venus, and slam the tube closed before Venus can get out more than one shriek of anger and fear and an emotion that cuts so deeply it feels like Venus is dying.

Venus screams and screams, but the tube is soundproof, and eventually it rolls itself into a tight ball of pain and anger and viciously tells itself that it will never give them another live birth. Never.

~

The subsequent births live, though.

Venus is the most prolific Birther in the cages. The Keepers barely let it rest and build itself up again with nourishment before injecting it with the chemical that encourages biodiversity, and telling it to divide. Venus is worn out, numb and tired and aching for something to douse this pain that comes every time they take its children away.

Finally, a new Keeper becomes head of the Birthing cages, and things change. Birthers are allowed to rest, and with this decree, less of them die, and more live births happen. The army is growing again, now. Venus longs for the day when it will be declared too old to birth, and is put in a battalion to be a soldier. Maybe killing and conquering will fill this void in its mass.

But the head Keeper has the Commander’s ear, and they have strange ideas involving rotations. There is a massive change in the army, and while everyone is disturbed by this change… no one has authority. No one has agency. Everyone is property of the Commander. So the change is implemented quietly.

Venus is taken from its cage and told that it is now a soldier. It agrees, and is placed in a battalion full of other Birthers.

The leader of this battalion is named. Their name is Riot, and the moment Venus sees them, it knows.

Their firstborn. The one they fought to keep. Grown, strong, vicious, seasoned, a good soldier. They have distinguished themselves well, to have a name. But Venus knows it cannot go near Riot. It cannot ask for them to acknowledge the bond. Terrible things will happen if it does.

Riot knows, too, though. Riot looks straight at Venus, and disgust radiates from them. Venus says nothing. Its insides are hurting again, but that’s not new. It will ignore the pain.

Venus’s battalion is let loose on a herd of hosts, and the first one Venus takes over, it’s shocked at how much _mind_ the host has. How much _thought_ , how much _emotion_. This creature is not lesser than the Klyntar; it’s just different. And Venus learns a word from this host’s mind, a word that describes the pain, because the host has felt it too, and even through the terror, the host and Venus have a connection. Loneliness. The word for this pain Venus feels is loneliness.

The other hosts begin to die almost immediately, and Venus’s host screams and backs away—Venus does its best, tries to stop from dissolving the host’s innards, but the host is too poor a match. They survive together for a full three minutes after the others die, before Venus slips up, and the host drops to the ground, dead.

Venus oozes out and makes its way to the door. The others are feeding on the fallen bodies, but Venus isn’t sure it wants to eat a creature who taught it so much with a single glimpse.

Riot forms a fist and slams down against the center of Venus’s mass. “Weak,” Riot snarls.

Venus says nothing.

~

It’s been many cycles, and Venus has birthed a child each cycle, while the other Birther-soldiers have been slowly petering out. But Venus is learning to fight and be strong. Venus is building up muscle, though it will always be smaller and weaker than the others. It is looked down upon, not only because it is often taken away for birthing, and therefore is never allowed to catch up, but also because it does not eat its hosts when they die. It feels odd about eating things that it had shared a mind with.

The Commander demands Venus’s presence.

Riot is chosen to escort Venus. Venus doesn’t know why. Riot is scared, their current host fidgeting. Maybe they have never met the Commander, and are terrified of her. Venus braces itself and reaches up to touch Riot’s limb.

“You are a distinguished soldier,” Venus reminds Riot. “You have nothing to fear.”

Riot stares down at Venus. Then they say, “If the Commander orders your death, I must protect you, and that means I will die.”

Venus undulates in confusion. “Why must you protect me? I am nothing.”

“You are my parent.”

Venus’s mass spikes, surprised. “Does that truly matter?”

“Yes. Don’t think that means you deserve special treatment. You are nothing to everyone else. But you are of my matter, so I must protect you.”

Venus is even more confused. Isn’t Riot of _its_ matter? There is no time to say anything more, because they are at the gates.

The two are conducted into the Commander’s presence quickly. Venus gazes in awe at the Commander, who floats in the air, a bubbling mass. She is bigger than any of her species, and her psychic signature is strong and full of harsh thoughts.

“Excellent Viciousness, it is here,” the herald tells the Commander.

“Good,” the Commander replies, and opens her eyes, huge and many-colored and curved so sharply. “All of you, leave us. You included, Riot.”

Those hovering at the edges of the chamber hesitate, then leave through various doors. Riot stays right where they are.

“Riot.” The Commander’s voice is hard and cold. “Leave.”

Riot reaches down and sinks their claws into Venus’s mass. “It is my Birther. I stay with it.”

“You overstep, soldier.” A tendril shoots from the Commander’s mass and slams Riot back, pinning them to the wall. Venus lets out a yelp of alarm—Riot has loyalty to Venus, loyalty beyond theirs to the Commander, and loyalty must be returned. Venus flows over and yanks at the tendrils wrapped around Riot’s limbs.

“Let them go, let them go!” Venus manages to free one of Riot’s legs, but the Commander grabs Venus and yanks it in close.

“This is the problem, Venus,” the Commander says, squeezing tightly. “You are too attached. You bond too easily. I must inspect you, and then I shall send you to that ugly little planet in the Eye-Spiral. Be gone, Riot.” The Commander lets go of Riot, and shoves it towards a door. Riot scrambles out without a single look back. Venus keens as the loneliness strikes again. It is alone with a being far more powerful than it. It knows it won’t die—but it can see the Commander’s intentions, and it is afraid.

It doesn’t want to be wiped. It doesn’t want to lose these words, these thoughts. It doesn’t want to be sent back to the Trainers.

But that doesn’t matter. It has no authority. It has no agency. It belongs to the Commander.

“We must rename you. Venus is too soft a name. Your name is Venom.”

~

Venom is smaller and weaker, and the others on the recon mission don’t let it forget that. They constantly abuse Venom. Riot is the only one who doesn’t. Riot ate a crew member when they told Riot that Venom is useless except as a Birther. Venom doesn’t know why.

It doesn’t remember anything before the Commander reprogrammed it. It just remembers pain, and numbness. It has learned anger, though, anger and fear, because it knows it is small and weak and only good for fixing things. The other soldiers regularly break things just to take it away from its scheduled retraining. It will never grow strong when it is never allowed practice, but that’s the whole point. As long as Venom is weak, it can never be a threat.

Riot keeps Venom close. Nothing on the command deck is broken for long, because Venom is stationed there in all but name. The stasis chamber beside Riot’s is supposed to be for the second-in-command, but after Venom ends up sleeping in a bucket because its chamber-mate doesn’t like it, Riot kicks the second-in-command out and gives the chamber to Venom. No one dares torment Venom in the night with Riot near.

But Riot is not kind. They don’t say anything cruel, but they make their dominance known. Venom often receives blows to the head for no real reason except that the others are muttering about favoritism. Sometimes Riot will punish Venom for the smallest things, things others don’t even think about. They often lecture Venom on how, since the two of them are related, Venom is pretty much Riot’s property.

Venom doesn’t think that’s right, because the connection between their minds doesn’t feel like one of ownership, but since Riot is bigger and stronger, it’s useless to fight.

Not that Venom is beaten down. No, no, it refuses to be beaten down. When it snaps, it goes for the closest tormentor, and usually it’s pulled off before it kills them, but not always. Venom remembers tearing the heart out of a tormentor and swallowing it whole, and how the others had backed away warily. It had tasted strange, but the triumph had felt so good—

—for about five seconds. Then Venom had realized that it had eaten one of its own kind. It had literally killed and eaten one of its brethren. And the shock of the strange revulsion sizzling in its mass kept it still for too long.

The sonic sticks are only used for criminals, but Venom is low enough on the social ladder. It was zapped by one after eating that heart, and that kept it in line. For a few cycles.

When the spaceship from the planet it got its name from lands on the scouting vessel, Riot grabs Venom and drags it towards the deeper halls—but the aliens have already cracked the hull, and entered, and they catch them both.

The tube they shunt Venom into is too much like the birthing tube. A memory sears through it: a memory of its child being torn from it, and pain, pain, not physical, but still so strong it felt like death. Venom screams, but the aliens don’t seem to notice. The others—Riot, Rip, and Gorge—they react, surging in their tubes, and Venom can feel their minds, startled by the strength of their connection and scared and angry at the fear, at Venom. But they can feel the pain in Venom’s atoms, and their minds are full of the urge to help it.

The aliens inject some gas into the tube, and Venom chokes, puddling in the tube, shivering, keening softly but too frightened to scream more. It feels the others settle, too, shaken by their own reactions. But Riot gets over the startled feelings quickly. Venom feels the anger and hate in Riot’s mind, the… possessiveness. Venom doesn’t understand that. But it wonders if Riot will break out and release their subordinates.

Venom rocks from side to side and keens as the memories it thought the Commander had destroyed seep into its every atom.

~

The gases make Venom weak and tired, but when Riot breaks out and tears the nearest alien to pieces, their vicious joy shocks Venom out of its fugue. It becomes aware of the feeling of falling, hard and fast, and the aliens screaming, trying to hold Riot back. But Riot is big and strong and crushes them easily. When they return to release the others, they come to Venom’s tube first, and go to rip off the lock—

But then fire rips through the hull, and Riot roars as they are driven deep into their host. Venom and the others scream, their training erased by being so close to certain death. The fire licks at Venom’s tube, and the terror filling it is so great that it almost misses the jolt of landing.

Riot’s host is flung through the hole in the hull. The tubes are knocked loose, and through the paralyzing fear, Venom realizes that the fire has not reached the floor of the chamber they were housed in. It doesn’t know how, but it tells the others what to do, and soon all three are sloshing frantically, and then their tubes break free, and all three slam into the floor, away from the fire. Venom slumps, unsure how much more it can take before it goes insane or dies.

It suddenly has a flash of memory, bright and shiny and colorful; playing with a toy, a puzzle made just for it. It remembers that puzzle. How the pieces had moved so cleanly when pressed in the right order. How it had been so excited to show its Trainer. How it was a tangible metaphor for a mathematical concept, a concept so precise and beautiful.

Venom remembers the taste of understanding. Of discovery. And it begins to think—maybe, just maybe—it can find a host here who understands the beauty of discovery. The perfection of understanding a piece of the universe. And maybe that host won’t hurt it. And maybe that host will understand its pain. Its loneliness. That… that would keep it sane and alive. Knowing it is understood.

The hope of that keeps it aware. As the aliens climb into the ship and retrieve the tubes, Venom stays awake, keeps its senses going. Maybe, when it is free, it will find such a host.

~

It’s been at least half a cycle and Venom is dying.

The aliens are _experimenting_ on it. They’ve tortured it, fed it terrible hosts, and seem obsessed with testing the limits of its sanity. The small, fuzzy hosts were too small and had absolutely no minds to speak of; the big hosts, the aliens, they’re far too scared to have much mind left. Some of them are ruined by poisons, poisons that make Venom woozy. None of them are in good health.

This latest host—it is a she, the other aliens refer to her as a she and her—she hums to herself, constantly, and when Venom attempts to speak to her, she starts crying and screaming, trying to drown it out. So Venom stops speaking. It just tries to fit into her skin, tries to cause the least pain, but it’s so _hungry_. It doesn’t mean to start digesting her, but the match is bad, and its physiology is such that it must eat that which does not fit. It’s half crazed, trying to decide whether letting her live is better or worse. She’s scared and in pain and the other aliens keep torturing her, it, them.

She knows loneliness, and pain, and she, too, has had a child taken from her. She knows the deep agony. She has a word for it, too—grief. Venom learns everything in her head and wonders why there’s no word for grief in the Home language. It wonders why they are such a bad match, when they have so much in common.

There is a presence outside their prison. Venom’s awareness is her awareness, and her head snaps up.

Another alien, but this one is dressed differently from the others, and she knows them. A surge of hope knocks Venom off balance, and before it knows what’s happening she’s banging on the door, begging for help.

The alien returns immediately, tries to unlock the prison, but they set off the alarm—

The sounds pierce Venom’s matter and make it scream, and that pushes it over the edge. She, the host, is screaming too, flailing with the force of the pain, and then the door shatters, and Venom, driven to the edge by pain and fear and rage and hunger, takes full control of its host to lunge.

Her mind breaks as Venom sends her forward, and she dies. But Venom has just enough time to slide from her into this new host.

The moment of insanity breaks, and Venom feels a wave of shock as it slots so perfectly against this host’s atoms.

They are a match.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It happened so fast and I don't know how

Venom tries its best to be tough, to be the way the other soldiers were, but the moment it finds the word that matches its own experiences and uses it—loser, Eddie is a loser—it sees Eddie react violently, and a flare of pain blossoms in his mind that shudders through Venom.

The experiences are the same. That means their reactions are the same. And Venom has always hated being beaten. Maybe it shouldn’t treat Eddie like a subordinate; maybe it should… it doesn’t know the word, but it knows the feeling. The feeling that bubbles through its matter, the primal urge to protect. It’s different than what it felt for its first child, but still strong.

Venom sinks into Eddie’s body and becomes aware that all its cycles of training, all that honing and desensitizing and the Commander’s mind-wipe, it’s unravelling. Venom is still Venom, but now it remembers its old name. Venus.

Sifting through Eddie’s mind, wondering if he knows the word Venus, Venom finds other words, other emotions, other moments. They’re so strange, it doesn’t understand them without context. Maybe it will, one day.

It finds the word Venus, and sees how it connects to another word. Aphrodite. And there’s a meaning to that word: goddess of love. Venom has no idea what that means, but the vague feelings attached to that meaning are soft and comforting. The way Venom felt when it chose Venus, only more refined, more potent, because of context.

Venom decides something. It’s going to take Eddie back with it. It’s going to bring Eddie home, and it’s going to keep him, forever and ever, because he is a good host and they are so well matched and Venom feels a strange emotion that—

Eddie looks at his rectangle—phone, the word pops up, and since Venom is in his head, it knows what the letters mean. And it knows the bodily reactions to the name.

**Who is Anne?** it demands, the bubbles of possessiveness returning. **Your pulse has quickened.**

“Anne is none of your goddamn business,” Eddie mutters.

**Everything of yours is my business.**

“Yeah, then you know why I’m going here before we get to your damn rocket.”

**Sure. I am not unreasonable.** Venom keeps its voice calm, but the possessiveness is squeezing it and making it angry. Eddie answers the phone, and Venom listens closely to what is being said and also the emotions Anne’s voice evokes. Its anger ratchets up several notches, and with the anger comes hunger and a need to commit violence, so when Eddie feels dismay as he holds the phone out to the man who refuses to help, Venom blurts, **Let’s eat his brains!**

“ _NO_!” Eddie jerks back, and Venom is surprised by the force of his revulsion. “You do not _touch_ him, he is my _friend_!”

Venom is so confused that when Eddie says “We’re leaving,” it contracts in surprise.

**We** , it murmurs, rolling the implications around in its mind. And when Eddie is standing outside again, desolate and afraid, Venom rouses itself. It must prove to its host that it is superior to any other human he may come into contact with.

**You want up?** it asks, latching on to the most immediate problem. **Why didn’t you say so?**

~

The moment it’s torn from Eddie’s flesh by those horrible sounds, it feels that emotion, grief. But it has a catalog of words and meanings from Eddie, now—grief, and guilt, and a terrible, terrible form of loneliness, that it was taken from its perfect host. It is dying, but it doesn’t care. It wants Eddie back. It wants him back so bad it starts keening, even as it realizes that this place is not a perfect prison. It crawls up the wall, ignoring Anne (who actually isn’t so bad, even if she did try to kill them) and that other human, Dan (who is bad because he said Venom couldn’t heal Eddie). There is a way out, a hole in the ceiling—through it, Venom finds itself in a long stretch of metal shaft.

A sudden shockwave of memory gives it strength. This is a smaller version of Home. It can find its way easily through here, tasting the air, feeling the energies of the humans. It hurries through the shafts, searching for a good host, and finds one. Small, like those fuzzy things Eddie calls rabbits, but a little stronger, a little smarter.

It takes over the little host and directs it down the halls, trying to find Eddie. There! Being dragged away, into one of the moving boxes. Venom doesn’t dare follow in this fragile form. But it knows a better form—one that will withstand it better than this fuzzy thing.

It goes in search of Anne.

~

“You know where he is?”

**Yes.**

“How?”

**I just do.**

Venom is very uncomfortable with the dawning realization in Anne’s mind. Hastily, it tells her, **We will be too late if I do not take over. I am faster than you.**

“That’s… yeah, that’s true.” Anne takes a deep breath, and says firmly, “Okay. What do I need to do?”

**Nothing.** Venom overtakes her, surprised at how different their form is, but pleased that her fear, while potent, is more easily controlled. Eddie truly is a mess. But that’s why Venom wants him. Venom takes a breath and climbs the nearest building in seconds, then begins to run. This is a workout, running across the rooftops, but it must know where it is going, where its goal is. Where Eddie is.

When they find Eddie, Venom’s first instinct is to go to him immediately. But Anne holds it back, her wariness strong and her logic impeccable. Venom picks off the two soldiers, snapping their necks and dropping them on the ground, then stalks over, turns their leader around, and bites his goddamn head off.

Victory, and brains, are so sweet.

“Hi, Eddie,” Venom and Anne say together. Venom takes the memories of greeting Eddie by touching mouths, and decides that that will be a good way to return to Eddie.

It is. Venom seeps back into Eddie, feeling… content, and triumphant, and happy. Happier even than solving those puzzles. They’re together again. Venom and Eddie, together.

But Eddie has a memory, and that memory blasts away the happiness.

Riot.

Puny humans, trying to convince it that without a symbiote, they are strong enough to fight Riot—Venom has no doubt Anne would be a strong ally, but not in her fragile human form. If Gorge were here, that would be good; Gorge hated Riot, was always looking for ways to harm them. Gorge and Anne would be very helpful.

But Gorge is dead and Anne is human. So Venom snarls, “ **Not today**!” and runs as fast and as far as it can.

When it gives Eddie back the controls, Eddie is indignant, and that hurts. Eddie is still angry at Venom. Eddie is furious about oh so many things. Venom tries to stay aloof, tries to be reasonable, but—

“Cut the bullshit. What really made you change your mind?”

It’s out before Venom can rethink it. “ **You. You did, Eddie**.”

Eddie goes very quiet, and Venom, overcome with embarrassment, jumps off the hilltop.

~

Being absorbed into Riot is painful, for both of them. Because Riot—Riot is Venom’s child.

The realization hurts as much as being absorbed. Feeling and hearing all the ways humanity treats its parents, from all those hosts before Eddie, Venom can’t help feeling betrayed. When Riot did not look back, in the Commander’s chamber—when Riot hurt Venom for no reason other than make sure it knew its place—when Riot planned to kill it because it did not want to destroy Earth—

Venom was willing to let Riot be. It was willing to lock Riot up until they saw reason. But Riot would rather Venom died than “betray” their species.

Venom screams and fights, but Riot is strong and Eddie is tired and Venom is nothing, no authority no agency property to everyone except itself—

Sound like a knife rips through Riot and Venom. It hurts. Not as much as discovering that no one in its life has ever cared, but painful enough. It tears itself away from Eddie, because it knows its pain affects him, and falls into the water.

It floats, catching its breath, and sidles under the platform, climbing up the vent, and then it hears something that makes it freeze.

The sound of a blade ripping through flesh.

“ **You are nothing**!” Riot snarls, and then there is nothing but the sound of the rocket lifting off.

Slowly, Venom creeps up through the vent. Eddie is lying there, a blade through his torso. He is limp and his eyes are closed.

Venom is numb because if it lets itself feel, it will go to pieces. It approaches Eddie because it wants to touch him one last time. One more time before it dies of a broken heart.

But there is life in Eddie yet.

Venom’s heartbreak slowly transmutes, as it takes over Eddie’s body, replacing his blood, feeding his cells with its own matter so they will replicate and heal faster, covering his body in the shell of Venom. The heartbreak is gone by the time it rises. When it rips the blade from their body, it screams with all the hatred and rage it has ever felt, years of torment boiling over, years of grief and fear and useless anger, and the only thing it can think is:

Riot will pay.

Venom swarms up the tower and jumps, landing beside the window. It can see Riot’s mouth form the word “ **Traitor**!”

The bloodlust clears just enough for Venom to say, “ **Have a nice life** ,” before it jumps, twists, and tears open the fuel cell.

It invests as much of its matter into Eddie as it can. It will protect him to the end. But the fire burns, and as Venom forms a parachute, to protect Eddie and keep him from dying on impact with the water, it feels its matter being eaten away. It’s tired. It’s dying. It has killed its own child. An odd sort of peace fills it.

**Goodbye, Eddie,** it says, and feels its consciousness disappear.

~~~\0/~~~

Eddie wakes up in the hospital. He doesn’t really know why, until he realizes that his hands, arms, and face hurt like they’ve been too close to a fire for too long, and his insides hurt, in a way that definitely is not good. Something happened. Something very bad has happened. He sorts through his memories, slowly, trying to put them in order…

The last thing he remembers is the lifeboat picking him up. But just before that—something happened, just before that.

Venom.

Eddie gasps, blindsided by the surge of grief that fills him at the memory of the final moments. His hands curl into fists, and tears sting his eyes. Shit. No. Not Venom. Not that people-eating touchy-feely monster. Not that alien who loved him. He remembers that. He remembers feeling emotions not his own, a peaceful kind of love, to go with that soft goodbye.

But just before the sob building in his chest bursts out, the softest voice in the back of his head says, **Good morning, Eddie.**

**~**

**~**

**~**

**~**

**~**

It takes Venom a very, very long time to build up its strength. It was surprised to find itself alive in Eddie’s bones—but then an explanation clicked into place. In its final moments, instinct had taken over, and drawn as much of Venom’s consciousness within the matter packed into Eddie’s flesh as could fit. So they were both damaged—but neither were dead. Venom had lost many memories, but it doesn’t really miss them. The memories that linger are painful enough.

Finally, Venom is strong enough to control and manifest again. It lets Eddie know by manifesting its head over his shoulder while he’s brushing his teeth, and grins at him.

“ **Better now** ,” it tells him smugly.

Eddie grins back, and kisses its cheek, toothpaste-foam still on his lips. “Good.”

“ **Eddie**?”

“Yeah?”

“ **Did you know that I love you**?”

Eddie spits out the toothpaste, sets down the brush, and hugs Venom, burying his face in Venom’s surface. “Yeah. I love you too, Ven.”

~

Sometimes, when Eddie is sleeping, Venom thinks about that. About how Eddie means it.

It remembers its toy, complicated and shiny and mathematical. It remembers that the mathematical concept had something to do with klyntar genetics. The Makers had still been puzzling over what it meant. But Venom knows now.

It was the mathematical translation of how a Birther’s traits are passed on to the spawn. Every bit of science wrapped in tangible numbers. Venom remembers turning the toy over and over, examining it from every angle. It was the key. It was the reason. All those millennia of testing, of careful breeding, of predicting who would create more of the best soldiers—and there was that tiny piece, that uncontrollable element, that had gone and stuck on the child who would later become Venus. The first klyntar to truly understand love.

Venom snuggles down next to Eddie, its host, its love, and is so happy it hurts.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments = Life, Love, and Happiness


End file.
